SpankyMcFarland

And what does it mean when Israelis say something similar, given that they have done it already? It’s not an aspiration for them.

Actually, nobody can say for sure where all the funding for these ads is coming from although some of it is identifiable. I would say it is highly unlikely that much of it arises from Democrats within her electoral district. What we are seeing here is an attempt by outsiders to buy an election. More trouble for the Dems on the Israel/Palestine front: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/07/house-vote-censure-rashida-tlaib-palestine-criticize-israel Some Democrats joined the Republicans here.

Here is the Tlaib link. Could not post it above for some reason. https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-attack-ad-against-rashida-tlaib-sparks-fury-dangerous-1840568 Six figure sums already being spent a year in advance to unseat a sitting Democratic Congresswoman. Has that ever happened before?

She’s in the strongest position, of course, which is why they didn’t challenge her last time out. Still, an AIPAC-affiliated group is spending large amounts of money against her already. Others are much more vulnerable and their opponents’ campaigns will be given millions to beat them. At some point the party may have to put rules on this. Attitudes to a single foreign policy issue should not be a litmus test to determine who can represent the party. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/aipac-israel-gaza-netanyahu-mark-pocan.html

I presume we’ll hear more about what is alleged. Clicking on that link I came across another video of Mr. Eby looking miserable.

No they won’t. Trump deserves some credit for the Warp Speed program but can you look me in the eye and tell me he spoke about the pandemic in a responsible fashion from the beginning, avoided discussing ineffective treatments and promoted vaccination as vigorously as he possibly could? The message from the Biden administration was much more coherent. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/20/trump-vaccines-ex-aides-483387 Also bear in mind that the US has the leading biotech industry in the world. It would be deeply weird if they didn’t produce vaccines rapidly. Here’s a review of the Trump administration’s response to Covid: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9115435/

People concerned about Covid (and pandemics in general) or climate change are going to vote for Trump?

I think the Democrats do have a serious problem over Israel/Palestine. The energy in the party is with young left-wing candidates like the Squad but they are being targeted by a massively funded campaign involving AIPAC and other Israel-affiliated organizations that aims to defeat them in the Democratic primaries. Last time out several critics of Israel like Donna Edwards and Andy Levin were defeated but this time they are aiming at high profile targets like Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress. If money brings these candidates down there will be hell to pay in the party.

Most people don’t know PP yet. They’ll really decide whether they like him if and when he becomes PM and has to make unpopular decisions.

Eby isn’t the sunniest of politicians, is he? He seems to be constantly unhappy or disturbed about something, at least in the tiny snippets about him that come my way. I hope he’s really more cheerful than that. Politicians are also salesmen. Sunnyways are part of what they need to project.

I fear the very last people denying climate change will be found on this forum.

I suspect things will carry on as they are but worse. The oligarchs will be far richer and more powerful but they’ll still want a handful of workers around: 1. Police, judges, prison officers. That will continue for quite a while. 2. Artisans. It will still be fun to see handmade stuff. 3. Celebs. They’ll be the whole world to most of us. 4. Politicians. People to make things seem like they were. I was listening to The Man Who Sold The World and I wondered will such a person eventually exist? Somebody who sells the world. Given the way wealth is being concentrated, it could happen.

Hamas is a death cult. End of story.

I am not a supporter of Hamas in any way, shape or form. As a secular social democrat, I believe all religion should be a private matter and has no place beyond the home and places of worship. Having lived in a virtual theocracy I know that clerics make terrible rulers. Of course, I’m fully aware of the recent history in this region and of the horrific Oct 7th attack as I have repeated on multiple occasions here.

An junior Israeli minister got a little out of line here: An Israeli minister has said Palestinians should ‘go to Ireland or the deserts’ and that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza is an option, as the Israel-Hamas war enters its fifth week.https:// https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2023/11/05/hamas-should-go-to-ireland-or-deserts-and-using-nuclear-bomb-on-gaza-an-option-says-israel-minister/ He had to later say that his remarks were ‘metaphorical’

On the off chance that any harmless third party is reading these ramblings, let me be quite clear yet again. There is no doubt that Hamas targeted civilians in its 7th October attack.

The anti-Semitism issue is interesting. It’s an example of the right using the tactics of the left. The whole notion of racism being widespread and bad arose on the left. Now the accusation of anti-Semitism is used by people on the right to defame and intimidate critics of Israel. Sometimes it is warranted but it is deployed so indiscriminately that it has lost much of its value. Marcus Gee write a piece about it in the Globe where he started with the Dreyfus Affair. Can he not see the problem with that? The difference between, say, French officers looking for a scapegoat in their ranks and an Arab farmer being driven off his land?

I don’t think its as simple as that. There are hundreds of targets each day. There have been incidents in the past where the Israelis have given false information initially until they were forced to concede their culpability. usually this sort of backtracking doesn’t happen because we don’t have the sort of information to combat their claim. I think one can say that, in general, the Israelis seem to be making an effort to reduce civilian casualties. We can’t know that they don’t target civilians, eg journalists, on occasion and we don’t know how many civilians they might be prepared to kill to kill one Hamas operative.

I think it’s fair to say that minimizing collateral damage is more an art than a science. What about the simple question on collateral deaths: what is the maximum number for one target? I have no idea. In terms of evidence, I think we are getting to a point with AI where it will be very difficult to assess the veracity of same.

No. Let’s go up, way up and look at the globe through time. What do we see since hom sap appeared? Constant wars. Constant fear and loathing. IMO it’s part of our condition, how we are wired. I know Poles who, fifty years after WWII, would panic when they’d hear German. That’s a reasonable fear to have given what they went through. Unfirtunately, tribalism is part of our birthright. All we can do in each generation is recognize it and try to control it. I would say that racism is irrational hatred of other groups. We shouldn’t be too PC on this. After all, I’m supposed to be the lefty here. Those who have suffered at the hands of other groups may have a reasonable dislike of them.

What a silly post. Why do you get yourself so worked up? You’re going to burst something at this rate. Of course I did all that. Let’s talk about something less abstruse - intent. I don’t know the answers to these questions BTW. How do we determine that the intent of a party in a war is to keep civilian casualties to an absolute minimum? Is there a rigorous mathematical model we can apply to test this hypothesis or do we end up having to take a country’s word for it? And what is the maximum ‘collateral damage’ (what a grotesque euphemism, ie civilian injuries and deaths) that is justified to kill one ‘legitimate target’?

I have condemned Hamas for starting this war. I don’t think I can be clearer on that aspect. As somebody who spent a career looking at dead bodies, I am merely struck by their broadly similar appearance after massive trauma. Dismemberment has a common look. Another question is the assessment of intent: how does one do it? If a govt says it seeks to minimize collateral casualties, can we really test that hypothesis? In other words is it a scientific, falsifiable statement or something less than that? It’s a complex retrospective business and I’m not sure it can be done.

What are racism and anti-Semitism? Do they preclude ALL hostility to other groups? I don’t think so. Over the past five centuries, many indigenous people would be justified in hating and fearing white people. South Asians in South Africa would have good reasons to resent both the former white govt and the current black one. Similarly, if I was a West Bank Palestinian facing Israeli guns every day at endless checkpoints I don’t think I’d be too keen on those Israelis. By contrast, European anti-Semitism was and is deeply irrational, based as it is on all sorts of delusions about all Jewish people.

I condemn Hamas without reservation. However a burnt child looks the same no matter what military conduct brought about that atrocity and there are lots of burnt kids in Gaza today. Determining what collateral damage means and how many innocent victims can be killed for every legitimate target is not a simple affair and we rarely get to see those calculations. If we are ever subjected to aerial bombing ourselves, we may think on these matters a little more closely.

Leaving aside the ethnic cleansing angle I think Arab states should take as many Palestinians as want to leave Gaza and give them citizenship. It’s their region and their responsibility. Of course, these countries are not famous for welcoming immigrants from nearly anywhere. Israeli American businessman Sheldon Adelson, for example, was famous for being keen on open borders in the US to staff his hotels but equally keen on closed borders for African migrants to Israel.